I recommend pre-emptively blocking emails from Cupventi and quite possibly Beehiiv for good measure

Occasionally I get spam in my Gmail account. 

It's usually fairly straightforward to deal with - deleting, unsubscribing, reporting as spam etc. You can also set up a redirect so that if an email arrives containing a keyword it bypasses your inbox and goes to the Bin or some other holding mailbox. 

Generally telling Gmail that an email is spam and unsubscribing means that's the end of it, not so with 'Cupventi' who seem more determined to irritate me with their spam emails about coffee, using Beehiiv as their newsletter provider (Beehiiv are somewhat the innocent party here). A different spam newsletter, also via Beehiiv, was easier to get rid of.

I initially unsubscribed from the daily (!) Cupventi newsletter and reported it as spam so was surprised to receive another message a day later. I contacted Beehiiv on Twitter to let them know that Cupventi were misusing their system and they told me they'd look into it. 

Everything went quiet for a while but a couple of days ago I received another one so I repeated the process of unsubscribing, reporting as spam and letting Beehiiv know. I also set up a redirect so that anything that mentions Cupventi or Beehiiv is automatically re-routed to my Gmail bin so I'll literally never see another message from them again unless I check. Guess what I stupidly just did. I'm quite irritated.

So... I have decided to republish without permission their copyrighted text, mangling all the links to they can't point to anything to show you precisely what you're not missing. No need for you to wait to be subscribed unwillingly to their repetitive (see bits I've bolded) blethers about coffee, feel free to pre-emptively block Cupventi, and possibly Beehiiv for good measure. 

Spam email below

 

The London Institute of Mathematical Sciences is harshing my mellow - spam newsletter

Late last year "LIMS" the London Institute of Mathematical Sciences added me to a list to receive their newsletter.

At the bottom of the newsletter there was a link to change my subscription or unsubscribe. I'd never subscribed (nor heard of them, their website was unfamiliar) and wondered why on earth I'd been added. It is always possible that I've mistakenly signed up to something and can't initially assume that someone else is at fault.

While technically clicking unsubscribe should remove me, I'd argue (admittedly pedantically but for heaven's sake this is a maths organisation and you'd think they would appreciate the precision of my logical argument) by definition I cannot unsubscribe if I've never subscribed. So I asked how / why I'd been added. Below is a summary of the redacted communications which I'm adding here in case others google to find out why they've been added to LIMS' newsletter / mailing list.

My email address should never have been added to a mailing list / newsletter without my permission, so clicking 'unsubscribe' wouldn't have uncovered how that error was made in the first place. Sadly, as you'll see, none of the other efforts I've made have managed to unsubscribe me either. A friend has advised that I contact the ICO though I'm sure they'd say "Oh for heaven's sake just click Unsubscribe" ;)

LIMS joined Twitter (@London_Inst) this month, and sent me another newsletter to tell me. Hence this post.


1. 25 November 2018 (they first emailed me on 23rd Nov)

Subject:	Re: The London Institute becomes an Independent Research Organization, and other news
Date:	Sun, 25 Nov 2018 21:56:44 +0000
From:	Me
To:	London Institute

Hi - can you clarify when I signed up to receive this? I'm not familiar with your website but the option to Unsubscribe suggests that I must have subscribed at some point.

Thanks,
Jo

2. My second reply following up, on 29 November 2018

Subject:	Re: The London Institute becomes an Independent Research Organization, and other news
Date:	Thu, 29 Nov 2018 12:12:58 +0000
From:	Me
To:	London Institute

Just wondering what the status of this enquiry is, thanks, Jo

3. My third reply on 29 November 2018

Subject:	Re: The London Institute becomes an Independent Research Organization, and other news
Date:	Thu, 29 Nov 2018 15:28:14 +0000
From:	Me
To:	[Redacted]

Thanks [Redacted] - I don't think I've been to a talk there and the website wasn't familiar to me. I am just always wary of finding myself subscribed to things as it seems to happen a lot with an academic email address (mine, I mean).

Best wishes,
Jo

On 29/11/2018 15:23, [Redacted] wrote:

Dear Jo,

I have sent an email around the Institute to see whom you are connected to/know and take it from there. I assume you would remember if you came to a talk here?

Best wishes

[redacted]

4. My fourth reply following up on 10 Dec

Subject:	Re: The London Institute becomes an Independent Research Organization, and other news
Date:	Mon, 10 Dec 2018 17:09:56 +0000
From:	Me
To:	[Redacted]

Hi [Redacted]

Any news on this?

Thanks,
Jo

5. My fifth reply, to a new message

Subject:	Re: Happy Christmas from the London Institute
Date:	Tue, 11 Dec 2018 17:39:10 +0000
From:	Me
To:	London Institute

What is going on here? Who signed me up for this? If I signed myself up (I genuinely don't remember) when did I do that? I've randomly started receiving messages from you in late November having never knowingly communicated with you before. Why?

Thanks,
Jo






6. Their reply reassuring me that they'd asked for my details to be taken off their database - this was in response to #4

Subject:	Re: The London Institute becomes an Independent Research Organization, and other news
Date:	Fri, 14 Dec 2018 11:29:30 +0000
From:	Redacted
To:	Me

Dear Jo,

I am afraid I have no finite answers on this but have requested that you are removed from the database so you will receive no further updates or seminar notices from the London Institute.

Kind regards

[Redacted]

Didn't work ;)
Everything went quiet until April 2019

7. My sixth reply to a new newsletter

Subject:	Re: London Institute in Times Higher Education and other news
Date:	Fri, 5 Apr 2019 16:04:59 +0100
From:	Me
To:	London Institute

How is it that my email address is still on your mailing list despite assurances in December 2018 that it would be removed (see attached)? I had never knowingly heard of LIMS before your first email to me in November 2018 and still have no idea how or why my address was added in the first place.

Jo

8. Six months after that we begin again...

Subject:	Re: Follow our new Twitter account and see our range of research projects
Date:	Wed, 16 Oct 2019 19:03:52 +0100
From:	Me
To:	London Institute

Why am I receiving this?

Thanks
Jo

People can now send you tweets by email, even if you're not on Twitter

I've been emailing myself, and others, the links to various tweets using Echofon on my phone for a while now but I've just noticed that Twitter.com has brought in the ...More option for anyone (logged in) to be able to send a tweet to anyone else via their email address (whether or not they're on Twitter themselves).

This means the email will come from Twitter with " shared a tweet with you", rather than an email coming from your friend with the link to a tweet they've spotted.

You can see it in the link below in the screenshot version (next to Favorite) - not sure if it will show up in the embedded version though.

Screenshot version

Embedded version

The Queen does the washing up once a year, after the summer barbeque at Balmoral. She retires to a special hut to do it. (@walkthelinesldn)
— The QI Elves (@qikipedia) December 21, 2012

I can imagine this either being really great, or being really annoying and quite puzzling to people who aren't currently using Twitter and who might therefore be a bit surprised to get messages from Twitter. The subject will look like this "Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) shared a Tweet with you!" - so it will come from whatever account is logged in, so if you don't know their Twitter handle then it might be confusing.

If you're not interested in receiving these tweetly emails you can pre-emptively block them by setting a filter (for all of your email accounts) that deletes any email coming from @postmaster.twitter.com or where the subject contains the phrase "shared a tweet with you". People who try and send you tweets will get a message saying "Right now you are not allowed to share this tweet with that email address".

If you don't want set up filters but emails start to come in (OK I'm not really imagining a deluge) you can still unsubscribe from future messages by clicking on the link in the text at the bottom of the email.

I've got several Twitter accounts and several email addresses (one for each) and when Twitter started emailing everyone to tell us what was happening on Twitter (I mean... seriously?) that was pretty irritating having to manually unsubscribe from each one to stop receiving the spam emails.

On the plus side it's another way to 'trap' a tweet, but it only works for individual tweets. If you want to grab someone else's (or your own) timeline I'd recommend Twilert which sends an email every day. Mind you, Twitter's also rolling out the opportunity to download your entire Twitter archive too, but only your own I think.


Further posts in the Twitter tips series...